


do it for him

by jonphaedrus



Series: Give and Take Universe [3]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Disabled Character, Fix-It, Gen, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Older Characters, Post-Canon, this fic includes things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-04
Updated: 2015-07-04
Packaged: 2018-04-07 13:53:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4265676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonphaedrus/pseuds/jonphaedrus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We rode on in silence then, until we reached the city limits and we had to find a place to hitch up Lassa. In twenty years, Republic City had grown and prospered far past what it had been when we had lived there in what seemed like another lifetime, and taking an ostritchhorse into the city limits, even one as well trained as Lassa, was going to be a bad idea. We’d probably get run over immediately. Instead, I handed Amon his cane once we were both down and walked slowly by his side, one arm out for him to lean on, and he sighed, mask turned out toward Yue Bay as we walked past it. Air Temple Island glittered in the setting sun, and I sighed, closed my eyes for a moment.</p><p>I could almost, if I really tried, pretend we were still young men. We weren’t, of course, but there was still that lingering sense of hope and home over Republic City that had never quite left, even though we’d not been back in decades. It still reminded me of two young men, and dreams, and mistakes, and victories the way that nothing else did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	do it for him

**Author's Note:**

> a commission for @mangsney on tumblr. THIS REALLY BROUGHT IT BACK TO ME, MAN...what a good fandom and a good ship, haha. it's good to have closure for them after all these years, haha
> 
> it was really important to me to try and talk about some of the stuff that (afaik? i havent watched s 2-4) bryke ended up really passing over in later lok, espec. wrt the issues that came up in s1, and i may not have been able to represent those inequalities in the wrong way, and if i did im rly sorry, haha. i do my best

you do it for him, and you’d do it again  
what they don’t know is your real advantage  
_when you live for someone, you’re prepared to die_

“This is stupid,” Amon said, snarling from where he was doubled over on the bed, panting for breath. “I’m not that old.” I laughed, although I didn’t mean to, and shook my head, and I could practically feel him glaring at my back while I finished washing the bamboo for us to eat on the trip.

“Sixty is pretty old,” I replied, and added, “Hey!” when the tap sputtered and burst water all over my face, spraying my shirt wet and I turned around to find his mask smiling at me, his sandal finally laced. “That,” I gestured with my handful of bamboo, “Was uncalled for.” He just laughed at me, and it seemed almost impossible to think that twenty years before now, this had seemed impossible, that I would never forgive him, to us being...like this.

But I had. And here we were, the blue stone around my neck cool against the top of my collarbones a constant reminder of how far we had come.

There was thumping on the roof above our heads and suddenly a face appeared upside-down in the kitchen window, and I slid the glass aside. “When are you leaving again?” Ping asked, her curls bouncing slightly, and I reached out to press them up against her head. Our little girl had grown up so much, into this wild adult.

“As soon as Amon gets his sandals on, monkey.” She stuck her tongue out at me, despite the fact that she was too old to do so. “Are you sure you’ll be all right without us?” She was a woman grown, now, but part of me would always see the three year old that squashed earthworms after the rains.

“Spirits, I’ll be _fine_ ,” she rolled her eyes, and shook her head. “You’re gonna be gone for like, what, two days? I can’t burn the place down in that much time. Even if I _tried_.”

“Please don’t jinx it,” Amon said quietly, and then I heard him stand up and limp over and he sighed and shook his head at Ping in the window, slid it shut, and slowly walked over to open the front door, leaning heavily on his cane as he opened it and Ping flipped off of the roof, landing next to him on the ground. “Really, Ping. Please.”

“You two are such worrywarts, I’ll be _fine_ ,” she groaned and got to her feet, leaned over and kissed Amon’s mask, and then squeezed me around the chest. “Just get going, before you’re late.”

“Like you’d know anything about that,” Amon murmured, and she stuck her tongue out at him too. I sighed, ignoring them, and went to go get Lassa out of the paddock where she was with the other ostritchhorses. Vaya had henpecked Rentu to death a few years before, interrupting our little family with the loss of one of it’s first members, and without him there to annoy she’d promptly died of shock and boredom, so now we had their varied and colourful children and grandchildren to ride, and Lassa was the most well-tempered of the bunch, very suited to riding, especially with Amon’s health declining as it was. It took both Ping and myself to get him up, and he spent the entire experience grumbling until he was settled and I climbed up after him, my knees aching until he reached back and touched them, the ache vanishing almost immediately.

“We’ll be back by the end of the week!” I called to Ping, and she waved as we rode away, one of Amon’s hands clenched in Lassa’s mane and the other holding onto my knee. It was a warm spring day, and it was good weather for travelling in—dry, not chilly, but cool.

“Twenty years,” Amon said, quietly, as we rode toward Republic City. We’d make it by nightfall, with time to stop by and see Xian and Toloak on the way back—it had been a while since we’d had a chance to visit our, now oldest, friends. “I can’t believe it.”

“I don’t think anyone can,” I replied, as the seashore passed by us. “It’s a little incredible.” I could hear his smile when he snorted slightly, and just nudged him on the shoulder with my chin.

We rode on in silence then, until we reached the city limits and we had to find a place to hitch up Lassa. In twenty years, Republic City had grown and prospered far past what it had been when we had lived there in what seemed like another lifetime, and taking an ostritchhorse into the city limits, even one as well trained as Lassa, was going to be a bad idea. We’d probably get run over immediately. Instead, I handed Amon his cane once we were both down and walked slowly by his side, one arm out for him to lean on, and he sighed, mask turned out toward Yue Bay as we walked past it. Air Temple Island glittered in the setting sun, and I sighed, closed my eyes for a moment.

I could almost, if I really tried, pretend we were still young men. We weren’t, of course, but there was still that lingering sense of _hope_ and _home_ over Republic City that had never quite left, even though we’d not been back in decades. It still reminded me of two young men, and dreams, and mistakes, and victories the way that nothing else did.

“Looks like rain,” Amon said, snapping me out of my thoughts, and I sighed, glanced up at the clouds—indeed, they had the leaden look to them that you only really got in Republic City just before a storm broke.

“Let’s find somewhere to eat,” I replied, and we wandered around until we found a city map that directed us to a place that did Fire Nation Hot Pot, and we headed there, taking our time but still hurrying as best we could to get in before the rain. We beat it, but barely, and found ourselves a table with chairs instead of floor cushions to protect Amon’s bad leg, and we settled in, ordering a little bit more than we probably should have.

“It’s been _years_ ,” he murmured, fervently, halfway through dinner, his mask set down beside him on the table because after two decades, you kind of stopped caring about things like burns. Besides, we were practically alone in the restaurant, and he still had his hood up. “How come you never cook like this at home?”

“You really want me to ride to the next town over to get the imported spices?” I asked, one eyebrow raised, and he glanced up at me, hesitated. “I mean, I could do it once and we’d be good for months, but I don’t want to leave you and Ping alone for a week and a half to do it—“

“We need some replacement parts for the tractor, after Ping took it apart for that...” he trailed of and gestured one-handed, “That _whatever_ that she made, that exploded all over the coop.” Oh, I remembered—the goosehens had refused to give eggs for nearly three weeks and they were still biting Ping every time she came within about thirty feet of any of them. “Especially with harvest season coming up and Sura gone from home. So you could go out, pick up the spices and the parts, and bring it all back.” He hesitated, and then tapped his chopsticks on the table before he continued eating, “Or, we could take advantage of being here and get both errands done, and also pick up some more seal jerky, because I’ve been craving it for months. And sea prunes, because even if you don’t like them, some of us have truly refined tastes. I also have a whole list of herbs that we need to buy, and Ping wanted us to get her some wiring, and—“

Realisation dawned on me, and I scowled at him, and his eyes smiled back at me. I jabbed him gently in the unscarred meat of his left hand with my chopsticks, and then grunted as he reached out to steal my squid bits. “You agreed to come so that you could buy your entire laundry list of things, didn’t you?”

Amon said nothing, just continued smiling, and I sighed and stole some bok choy in return for the squid. “It doesn’t hurt to be economical, especially at our age,” he replied, at last, the perfect man lying through his teeth, and I shook my head at him. Incredible.

After dinner, we ducked out of the restaurant to the last dregs of the worst of the rain, now petered off into a drizzle, coming down out of the sky. Amon pulled his muffler down lower over his forehead and up over his mouth, protecting his face from the rain, and I shrugged deeper into my jacket and zipped up the front to stay warm before we huddled together and walked back out into the rain.

We were planning to stay with Xian and Toloak’s daughter, little Yue (well, not so little any _more_ , as she liked to remind us whenever she came out to the farm with her something, who preferred no pronouns at all and kept teaching Ping some nasty tricks with wiring) and her apartment was still half a mile on, and I was about to suggest we catch one of the new streetcars when we heard shouting, a few streets over.

Not violent, no, but more...just preaching. “What is _that?_ ” Amon asked, taking the words out of my mouth, and I shrugged, but it _was_ along the way that we had to go to get to the nearest bus stop (streetcars were _long_ out of fashion) so we approached cautiously, Amon tucked under the overhanging roof of one of the buildings to keep out of the wind. When we saw what it was...

They had set up a stage. It wasn’t fancy; it was just clapboard and a tied-down cloth backing that was shuddering loudly in the wind. The three people on the stage had one megaphone between them, and their uniforms were...ragtag, to say the least. Black shirts and black pants, over black boots, none of them truly matching, just what they had been able to cobble together to the same expectations. All of them wore old welders masks, the style from back when I had been working in the industry, with the mouths cut out to speak.

And, behind them, matching with Amon’s shocked, horrified gasp beside me, almost caught up in the wind and the drizzle, was an absolutely ancient screenprint. It was about fifteen feet tall, and it depicted Amon himself, with the Equalist symbol emblazoned next to him in red ink. It was faded, water-damaged, with stains here and there, but it was _unmistakably_ one of the ones that had been created during the Revolution. 

“Where did they get that?” he whispered, quietly, hoarse. Years before, we had managed to reach out to the few remaining cells of the Equalists, who had all but disbanded, and using friends from in and around the city (and a bit of help from Sura, even then a smart young man) we had managed to gather up what had remained and burned it.

Or so we thought. 

“I don’t know,” I replied, my voice shaking slightly. For just a moment, I tasted blood in the back of my throat and smelled charred flesh and the old scar on my side, now nearly faded, burned like it was still fresh. Only Amon’s hand, pressed to my shoulder, kept me grounded. “I can’t—they can’t use you like that.” Of course, they could, given that both Amon and the Lieutenant were supposed to be _dead_ , but that didn’t make me feel any better.

“No,” he growled, and the rain around us vibrated for a moment, which was both frightening and astounding, before it continued falling. “They can’t.” He took a deep breath and straightened, the wind whipping about his muffler, and marched across the street, his back strong and his step sure even with his cane.

And I, ever his loyal Lieutenant, followed.

 

 

“People of Republic City!” One of the people on stage shouted, waving their hands. “Tomorrow marks the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Non-Bender Revolution, the death of our glorious leader, Amon!” They clenched a fist, mouth a flat line behind the welder’s mask. “The Avatar, without right, demands that we celebrate this day as a commemoration of _peace_ and _prosperity_ for Republic City, that this was the day the evil of the Equalists was vanquished, and true equality came to us. We know this isn’t true!” The other two people beside them shouted in triumph as well, also throwing up their hands. “Instead, we have faced new and more dreadful restrictions on our lives. They raise our taxes, they gentrify our neighbourhoods, they make _affirmative action_ to get us into universities! They ask us to identify ourselves on our governmental paperwork, create industries to house just us, and yet—“

“And you think that’s bad?” The voice, deep and strong, rose above the crowd of about fifteen people who had stopped to listen. “You think all of that is _bad_ , is _worse_ than what you had before?” Overhead, the rain picked up again, the drizzle turning almost instantly into a downpour. Lightning cracked, and thunder rumbled, and it illuminated a man in dark red and black silk and cotton, the loose cloth whipping around his body. His voice, although strong, was beginning to crack with age and ill-health, but he stood tall and strong despite the cane held clenched in his white-knuckled hand. “Affirmative action to get into universities? Twenty years ago, all non-benders were banned from attending universities. They make industries to help you gain jobs in a market _inundated_ with Benders just to support those with specialty skills outside of the elements. They ask you if you can Bend on census paperwork so that they can help neighbourhoods and employment systems be balanced to support you, and taxes are up on _everyone_ , not just you. Do you have any idea how high taxes are on Benders who can damage the home environments they live in are? Not to mention, were you even _alive_ twenty years ago?” Thunder rumbled and lightning cracked again, and this time it revealed a tall man standing just behind him, short black hair gone mostly grey, white streaks at the temples, and a long, thin moustache on his upper lip, wearing an old black leather jacket and farmer’s pants and sandals, his face lined and weathered from hard outdoor work and long years of smiles and laughter.

“What you’re talking about is _progress_. I hope you never learn the horrors of the Non-Bender ghettos, the industries they were universally banned from, the lack of voter representation. I hope you never have to ask those who lived through the revolution what they thought of the people that _died_.” The man paused, tilted his head slightly. “Do you know how many people died? Because I do. I can name them all for you. Every single one. Equalist and Bender alike, that died in that battle to bring you your precious peace, and now you throw it away because you can’t make use of a democratic government that exists to support the very rights you now demand we throw away?”

His voice rose to a fever pitch, and this time when the lightning cracked it came with a gust of wind that blew the thick muffler back off of his face, revealing a white porcelain mask with slitted eyes and high cheekbones, and if there had been enough light, a very faded red circle in the centre of the forehead.

 

 

Time stopped. At least, it seemed that way to me. The people froze, both the ones in the crowd and the ones on the stage, before Amon shook his head and tugged his muffler back up. “I’m sad,” he said, much quieter, his voice giving out after that much talking at such a loud volume. It had taken years for all the smoke inhalation to get to his throat, but it had finally come back to haunt him. “That all the effort and sacrifice that we went to has just lead to this. Revolution like this doesn’t solve _anything_ , violence is not the answer. Democracy, debate, and standing up to injustice will fix this. Not attacking anyone.”

The silence was absolutely deafening, and now that he wasn’t quite as angry, the water started to lessen slightly, the downpour returning to a regular rainfall. His muffler was sodden, hanging down low over his face, and I was completely soaked.

“Let’s go,” Amon said, and I nodded. We turned to leave, and then someone shouted,

“Wait! That’s—That’s _Amon!_ Grab him!”

And then everything happened very fast. Perhaps I was just getting old, or maybe I was just getting complacent, because five more people in their mismatched uniforms came out of the alley and ran at us, swinging bolos.

“Back off!” I shouted, my deep voice cracking, as I quickly stepped in front of Amon even as he drew water to him out of the rain, fashioning it into a long whip that mirrored the stance of his good left arm, letting him fight back without expending energy, and I pulled the old wooden kali sticks out from where they were strapped onto my thigh, which I never went without.

“Knock the old man out and grab him!” The same person from the stage shouted, and I snorted,

“Old?” Because they really knew nothing, if they knew Amon only by a mask _anybody_ could have been wearing and didn’t know who I was at all. But then, I had always been easily forgettable, which was more of a blessing than a curse when it came to the careers we had picked. Even after meeting us on and off for twenty years, Bolin still only knew me as Moustache Guy. “Boy, kid, are you in for a beating—“

“Less talking, more leaving,” Amon said, quietly, and lashed his arm forward, his strike of water hitting one of the uniforms in the chest and sending them flying before he twisted, pulling another one out of the air with his bad arm pressed close against his chest, and he moved past me, slow but sturdy, knocking aside and freezing bolos in midair.

Don’t ever fight a Waterbender when it’s wet—not when it’s snowing, or icy, or, worst of all, _raining_. Never, _ever_ fight a Waterbender when it’s pouring. You’re going to lose. And you’re going to lose hard. Which was pretty much what happened.

With me standing behind him to act as a support, knocking out anyone who got too close, Amon was a one-man wrecking machine, even if I could tell the toll it was taking on his body as he did it by how much he favoured his left side and how much less he used his right arm. He wasn’t fast, and couldn’t dodge, but with me keeping the revolutionaries (I would not, even in my mind, call them _Equalists_ ) off of him he had no trouble taking them down one by one.

Until I heard a crackle. A crackle I knew very well. I turned, and I saw Amon jerk in surprise, as something warm and hard pressed against the small of my back. There was a split-second moment where I knew what was about to happen before the electric current hit me like a wrecking ball to my spine and I shouted in pain.

“Lieu!” Amon yelled, twisting as fast as he could and stumbling as his right leg started to crumple, water racing up around the knee to freeze into place, a makeshift brace. “Lieu!” He tried to run toward me, and as I crumpled to the ground, seizing, I saw the lead from the stage step over me.

“What else did the spirits gift you with?” He said, walking towards Amon, who had thrown his left arm out to the side and raised a wall of icicles, knife-sharp, around him. I could barely see the scene, my vision going hazy, but I focused on him, his red coat sodden and showing the thin lines of his torso. “Waterbending? What else? Do you have the powers of the Avatar?”

“I am, and have only ever been, a Waterbender,” Amon replied, quiet. The man stepped closer, and Amon pulled his hand down, the rain turning to deadly knife-like icicles that whistled downward toward the man. “Now get away from me and Lieu.”

“But _tomorrow_ —“ the man said, and my vision went dark, and the last thing that made it through my subconscious before I passed out in the wet street was Amon’s desperate, broken shout of:

“ _Lieu!_ ”

 

 

Let me tell you something:

Waking up wet and cold at sixty-three is even worse than waking up wet and cold at forty-three. Exponentially worse. Waking up wet and cold after you’ve just been given an electrical shock that can knock a hardy young man out, in an alleyway, while it’s still pouring, is all kinds of absolute _shit_. Frankly, I was probably lucky I didn’t drown.

My back was screaming, and I sat up, coughing to get water out of my nose and lungs, and wiped my eyes on the back of my hand, which did nothing. It took several tries before I was able to shout “Amon?” but it was dead silent aside from me in that alley, and I lurched to my feet, shaking and trembling, and picked up my kali sticks.

“Amon?” Nothing, absolutely nothing, and I bent over, protecting my burning back as I hunted along the ground until I found his discarded cane covered in mud and almost knocked into a gutter. I picked it up, and stood there, breathing heavy and hard through my nose, eyes clenched shut.

“I’m too old for this,” my voice came out thin, like I was talking to him. I sounded hysterical even to myself. “I’m a _farmer_ , Amon. I haven’t—I haven’t fought in years. I don’t think I even could, not like this.” I clenched my hand around his cane, felt the carvings that Ping had designed and Sura had worked into the wood as his Waterbending Mastery project for Amon. “We were just supposed to be here because Asami wanted us. This wasn’t—“ this wasn’t supposed to happen. 

With nothing else to do, I turned, left the alley, and headed on, because I couldn’t do this alone. I needed _some_ kind of backup. I needed Yue.

 

 

I arrived, drenched, exhausted, and in pain, at Yue’s apartment door a half an hour later, and banged on it until she opened it. “Uncle—“ she gasped when she saw me. “Uncle Te?” She had never stopped using the false name we’d originally given her parents, but I’d never had the heart to tell her off for it. “What...what happened?” She leaned out, looked back and forth around me. “Where’s Noa? Te—“ she froze. “Te...you have...blood on your face.”

Sluggishly, I reached a hand up and touched my cheek, and it came away with flecks of red. One of his icicles must have grazed me. “It’s fine,” I said, and my voice didn’t sound like mine. “Can I come in?” I was making a muddy puddle on the apartment building’s hallway floor, and she nodded, pulled the door the rest of the way open.

“Of course. Come in. Aya!” She called in, to her friend, “Light the fire!”

Her apartment was exactly what I expected it to be. It was decorated in Earth and Water styles, with Fire here and there for Aya. Yue had her grandmother’s marriage pendant over the fireplace, and an abstract painting of a woman with white curls inside the moon hanging on one wall. Next to it was a drawing that Ping had done for her when they had been very young, depicting Yue as a dragon eating our house.

She pulled out a chair and I stumbled over before collapsing down, my head hanging low between my shoulders, and I didn’t even protest as she pulled off my coat and helped me out of my shirt, and her hands, covered in cool, healing water that I hadn’t even noticed her getting started moving over my torso.

Thin-fingered, scarred hands pulled Amon’s cane from me, and I looked up at Aya, who had a blade-sharp face with Fire Nation skin, Earth Kingdom eyes, and Water Tribe hair, matched with Air Nomad mastery tattoos in dot markings—a master of the teachings, but not of the Bending. I really had no idea where Aya had come from, and they seemed to like it that way.

Silent as ever, Aya held the cane out for Yue to see, and she gasped, her hand jumping from where it was on my back, healing the burn from the glove. “Noa’s cane!” She shifted around and knelt in front of me, her father’s blue, blue eyes staring at me out of her mother’s fine-boned face. “Te, what happened?”

“I don’t—“ I tried, my voice cracking, even as she helped me out of my sandals and my soaked pants, “I don’t know if I can tell you.”

“Aya,” Yue said, with finality that sounded _just_ like her grandmother, “Put on the kettle.” She glared at me, and that was all her own, and frowned. “I’m going to fix your back now, and you’re going to tell me what happened. All right?”

I stared at her for a long moment, and then sighed, slumping slightly. We had told her parents years before, because it hadn’t seemed right, but we had all four of us agreed then that she didn’t need to know. Possibly not ever.

I nodded.

“All right.”

 

 

I sat in Yue’s living room, in only my loincloth and covered by a thick polarbeardog pelt, shivering as Yue sat behind me and healed my back. Someone had gotten me a bowl of hot, thick miso and I had my hands wrapped around it while Aya watched me, and stared at the crackling fire and tried to think about where best to start.

“Many, many years ago,” I began, hesitantly, “Before myself, or your parents, or Noa, were born, there was a man named Yakone. He was a Triad boss, here in Republic City, who basically...well, he got away with pretty much everything. He was tried multiple times, escaped from police custody multiple times, had a list of crimes a mile long. And, what made it worse, he was a Bloodbender—people used to say he was the most powerful one to ever live.” Used to. Both his sons had far surpassed him, because _that_ was an expectation to live up to. “Eventually, when nothing else seemed to work to stop him, Avatar Aang took drastic measures and used something called Energybending to take away his ability to Bend.” They had both probably read and learned about all of this, but it was still important that they know the full story, from one of the few people who could tell the truth about it.

“Destroyed and humiliated, he eventually escaped police custody again, and had surgery to change his face. With nothing left for him here, he returned to the North Pole and made himself a new life, with a new name, and a new past. He married, and had two children, and they had a happy enough life until both his sons showed potential as Waterbenders.

“He...he was.” I hesitated. What had Amon called his father, once? “A demon, in a human’s skin. Even with a second chance at undeserved happiness, he couldn’t resist the potential in his sons. He began training them, first in Waterbending, and then in Bloodbending. He taught them everything he had known, and more, Eventually, he demanded that they fight each other as their final test of loyalty and mastery.

“His elder son did so, but his younger son, horrified by the act, refused. The older brother, guilty, and scarred, and _afraid_ , so afraid, ran away, into a blizzard. Inside, he died. Out the other side came...” I trailed off. “Amon. Out the other side came Amon. Noatak died, and became Amon.” I hadn’t yet heard the dawning realisation, but I knew it would come.

“You know the rest of the history.” She had been educated in Republic City, and the curriculum covered all of the Equalist revolution. “Eventually, Amon came to power leading a group of Non-Benders who called themselves the Equalists and staged a revolution that was primarily based on a desire for political rights. It all massively backfired, and in the end, his history was revealed, he almost killed the Avatar, and then his brother blew him up. That’s the end of the story.” I stared down at the soup in my hands, and took a long drink of the broth to wet my throat before I continued. “Amon was dead. The Equalists were over. The Avatar moved on to bigger and better things.”

“That’s...not. Entirely true, though.” I sighed, my shoulders slumped. “When Amon came out of that blizzard, he was a very different person. Nervous, and quiet, and sensitive, and very scared and _very_ stubborn. He came here, to Republic City, and worked for years as a radio operator, and lived with a washed-up engineer who worked odd jobs as a handyman.” Yue’s hand hesitated, pausing, the facts finally sinking in. “For a long time, I thought those were the happiest years of our lives, when we were carefree, or as carefree as we ever were, and young, and very in love. But then the laws about Non-Bender ghettos, and employment regulations, and the ban from higher education happened.” And she gasped—the shock, the realisation, the _horror_.

“We saw a couple get burned to death by a pair of Benders in an alley, one night. And that was it. We were young, and stupid, and probably didn’t know any better, but we still decided to stage a revolution. Amon led, and I was his Lieutenant—you don’t know how many people still, to this day, don’t know _anything_ about me, because nobody would ever believe that Lieutenant wasn’t actually a rank, it was just a pun. Because of my name.” Lieu Te Nan. My bark of laughter was more pain than amusement.

“At the Arena, at the end of the Revolution...well. That part’s all true. But the whole story about him dying, with Tarrlok? He didn’t. Die, of course. He came damn _near_ , and if it weren’t for your grandmother neither of us would have survived, and we still almost didn’t. It took him years to heal, from all the burns he got, and if he hadn’t been a Bloodbender I would have definitely died from internal injuries. But...we both lived. And we met your parents. And we moved onto a farm, and raised our kids, and kept an eye on you, and we came back here to...” I sighed, because Yue had frozen, listening to the story, and I could feel her and Aya watching me. 

“Asami Sato. I trained her, when she was young, younger than you are now. After her mother died. After her father died, she reached back out to us because she had nothing of her childhood left, and she wanted us to come for the peace day. She helped change the image of Amon from a monster to a man, a flawed one, to a martyr. Which he never really liked, but isn’t all that wrong.” He had given up everything, _all_ of himself, even his very identity, his face, to a revolution that had finally forced the hand of the government and paved the way for Non-Bender rights. Violence wasn’t the answer, but violence had finally, _finally_ , tipped the scales.

“She wanted us to be able to see what we had started. She wanted us to have some closure because he...Yue, he isn’t going to last much longer.” My throat tightened up, and I choked off. Neither of us said anything about it, even to each other, but his health was failing. His body was shattered, and the injuries were starting to take their toll. There was structural damage that had never healed, in his spine and his arms and legs. “I don’t know if it will even be another ten years, maybe not even another five. He wanted to be able to have one last look at this place, and to be proud of what we did. That’s why we came.” He wanted to say goodbye. To his brother. To our past. To our home.

“We were walking here, and we came across a...rally, of some kind. I suppose it was young people, copycats, trying to force change the same way we did—which didn’t work _then_ and still wouldn’t work _now_ —and he lost his temper, yelled at them, and then they saw his mask and one of them got one of Hiroshi’s gloves although god only knows how, and they knocked me out and. Grabbed him. And ran.” I stared down at my miso, and belatedly realised that there were tears dripping into the bowl. “I don’t even know where they _are_. I don’t know what they’re going to do to him, Yue. He can’t take that kind of stress, he _can’t_.” My shoulders were shaking, and I sat down the bowl beside me before I could upend it, and put my face into ne of my hands, covering my eyes so she didn’t have to see me cry. “And I’m too _old_ to do anything to help him. Even if I. Could try.”

“Uncle Te,” Yue whispered, and I could hear Asami’s voice, young and naïve, in hers, and that just made me cry harder, shaking, until she wrapped her warm arms around me, pulled me close, and pressed my forehead into her shoulder. “Uncle Te...no, please. Please don’t cry.” She sniffed, her voice cracking—she’d always had such a soft heart, and it ached to hurt her like this. “You’re both heroes. People think you’re _heroes_ , Uncle Te. Even if you didn’t do the right thing, they talk about you as martyrs, as the force that changed the world, paved the way. You’re not—you’re not _villains_. No, no, Uncle Te, please,” but the dam had broken. I was exhausted, and still in pain even with her healing, and tired and I felt sick and I hadn’t been able to protect Amon, the one thing I had ever been good at.

“What are they going to do to him?” I whispered, my voice cracking, and I felt a warm hand on my knee, and looked up after a moment to see Aya’s stern face staring at me through my tears.

“The ceremony tomorrow,” Aya said, in a voice was incredibly deep and husky, deeper even than mine. “He’ll be there.” I had known Aya for almost four years, and had never heard their voice. “You go, and they’ll bring him there. And you can get him back.”

“I’m terrified they’ll try and make him do something, like take someone’s Bending,” my voice cracked. He hadn’t been able to Bloodbend in years. “He can’t. If he doesn’t live up to their expectations, who _knows_ what might happen.”

“He’ll be fine,” Aya said, with certainty. “He has survived worse.”

Aya was right, of course. Amon had.

 

 

The next day, I took both my kali sticks and Amon’s cane, and arrived at the site of the ceremony as early as I could with Yue and Aya on either side of me. Yue’s face was like a typhoon at sea, stormy and steely and if looks could kill, she’d be ready. Aya was as placid as ever, but had worn gloves and heavy boots, both of them studded with metal.

There was already a crowd, and we got as near the front as we could. Asami wasn’t there yet, but there was a statue covered in a thick cloth, and Yue Bay was frothing today.

“She’s not happy,” Yue said, quietly, looking up at the pale sliver of the moon that was visible near the edge of the horizon as it set.

“Who?” I asked, and she nudged me.

“Yue. The Moon Spirit. She doesn’t like it when things happen to the people she marks. That’s why that typhoon knocked down our roof when Nan died; Yue’s always watching out.” I made a face slightly at her, but didn’t question it too much. I had never really gotten the Water Tribe obsession over the Moon Spirit, but it was apparently a very important thing, so I mostly just stayed out of it.

“They’ll be here,” Aya said, again, deep voice reassuring, and so I just sighed and settled myself between the two of them to wait as the rest of the crowd filled up, pressing up against the metal press barricades before Avatar Korra and Asami Sato walked up onto the stage.

Asami I had seen only a year previously, when she had come to visit the farm. She was going grey early, like her father had, and she had cut her hair short to accentuate it, her tight bob severe but fashionable, the silver streaking out of her part making her look very professional. She had smile lines around her mouth and her father’s reading glasses as well, with the build of a talented fighter belied by her modest pantsuit.

Korra I hadn’t seen since that day at the Arena, twenty years previously, and the changes were...markedly different. She had put on more weight as she approached middle age, her form grown stocky and powerful, with huge arms and strong thighs and a waist that showed that she could back up her Bending prowess with pure physical force. She wore her hair in long, thick dreads that were tied together loosely and reached the middle of her back, her Air Nomad tattoos matched by the numerous Water Tribe tattoos as well, marking her forehead and chest and legs under her shorts. She wore Water Tribe colours but cut like Earth kingdom clothes, and she was...about what I expected, honestly.

“If that’s not a sign of time passing, I don’t know what is.” I said, quietly enough that only Aya and Yue could hear me, “I remember when she was your age.” Yue giggled.

Korra stepped forward, spreading her hands, and tapped the wireless mic on her shirt to make sure it was on. “People of Republic City!” She called, raising her hands for silence. “It was twenty years ago today that the United Forces came to Republic City, to stop the Equalist Revolution. Many good men and women died that day,” she hesitated, “And not a few of them by my hand. It was a very different time, and a very different place, and we were all very different people.

“But a great deal of good came out of that as well. Amon and the Equalists paved the way for a revolution in Non-Bender rights, even if he did it in ways that weren’t always...ideal. Without Amon and the sacrifices of the Equalists, I don’t know how long it would have taken for the eyes of myself, of the government, to open to the plight and the devastation that we caused to the Non-Benders in our ignorance and our privilege.

“For twenty years, we’ve been working, learning, improving. We want Republic City, and the whole world, to treat Non-Benders the same as Benders. We want everyone to be equal. Laws are changing. Votes are changing. I don’t know if it will happen in our lifetimes, but we’re going to _try_.” She grinned, clenched her fist, and pumped the air wildly.

Ah, yes. _That_ was a bit more the Korra that I remembered.

“We’ve worked for twenty years! New generations are joining us, fighting with us, making the world a better place. Together, _all_ of us will help bring the world into equality, into prosperity, into—“

There was a scream, and then dozens of puffs of explosive smoke went off, and I immediately covered my eyes, because if it was the same as ours had been twenty years ago (it probably was) then it was only damaging to the eyes.

“Proselytising again, Avatar Korra?” Said a voice from the smoke, and there was a massive blast of air from off of the stage that blew all the smoke away, leaving a shocked crowd of several thousand, Avatar Korra on the stage with Asami Sato in front of her, both her hands sparking with some far-advanced Future Industries power glove.

And, across from them, was a group of the people in uniforms from the night before, holding Amon between them. Before Yue told me to start moving I was already going, shoving through the crowd with cut-off apologies as I scrambled toward the press fence.

“Oh, _great_ ,” Korra groaned, snapping. “It’s you again.” The man laughed.

“Just because you try to pull the wool over our eyes doesn’t mean that everyone is fooled by your lies! Pretty words mean _nothing_ , Avatar!” Spirits, he was trying to sound like Amon and doing a _really_ bad job of it. Someone needed to read more speeches. “We won’t fall for your lies and your petty platitudes, not when we have someone to stand up for us.”

“No, no, don’t you dare, don’t you dare,” I whispered as I reached the barricades and growled as I shoved aside the last few people. “Or so help me—“

“We have Amon!” The man shouted, and shoved my lover of forty years forward and out of the protective black uniformed huddle, unclasping his handcuffs (incredible, very willing participant there) and ripping off his muffler...revealing his mask, and even worse, the burns that remained on his head.

Korra, completely predictably, screamed like she had seen a ghost, and that was the point where I grabbed the nearest security guard and threw him out of the way and hopped the barricade.

“Get _off_ of me,” Amon snarled, shaking the black uniforms off, and he stumbled just as I grabbed onto the edge of the stage. I hauled myself up before he could topple over, barely catching him in time. He almost went down to one knee, and I pushed him the rest of the way up, and he straightened, grasping the cane I pressed into his hands with murmured thanks, not even questioning my appearance.

He had expected me, just like he always did.

Looking over at Asami, who nodded—she had apparently expected some bullshit—I caught Korra’s eye.

She screamed again, and pointed, and added, “Moustache guy!”

“Oh, come on!” I yelled back, before I put myself between Amon and the uniforms. “Twenty years, Korra, it’s not _that_ hard to ask someone for my name!”

“You two are _dead!_ ” She yelled, and Amon growled and shook his head.

“Not for lack of my brother trying,” he replied, and when Korra started to move Asami grabbed her by the arm, _hard_ , and stopped her mid-step. “What, Korra, are you going to attack an old man who hasn’t even done anything to you? Who couldn’t do anything to you even if he _tried?_ ” I could hear the anger and pain in his voice, and Asami cleared her throat to interrupt the near-physical tension between Amon and Korra.

“Let him speak,” she said, and her voice carried because of the mic. The crowd was absolutely dead silent. “Please, Korra.”

Slowly, she lowered her fists, and I didn’t budge, still staring at the uniforms and wishing, fervently, for the electrified kali sticks and generator wrapped up in a cupboard on our farm.

“Thank you,” Amon said, and after a moment, Asami pulled free one of the standing microphones and tossed it to him, and he caught it awkwardly with his left hand, tapped the head to make sure it was working, and turned to face the black uniforms along with me.

“Twenty years ago,” he began, voice steely, “I stood up on a stage not much different from this one, and declared that the age of Bending was over. Then, in a staged combat match, I used Bloodbending to humiliate four Triad members, using their bodies in a way that I should note is _incredibly_ painful, and one by one, cut off their body’s physical connection to their bending.” You could have heard a pin drop. “And for me, that was a triumph.

“Do you want to know what I think of that now?” Pause. “I have never been so disappointed in a decision in my entire life. Because of what _I did_ , because of the decisions _I made_ , over _four hundred people_ died in the coming months. People I had watched grow up. People I had known. Aa, Acer, Adla, Adef, Aen, Ahou, Ahie, Aie, Aja, Akuji, Alma, Aloz, Amora, Amoa, Ano, Anto, Aoi, Aro, Aris, Ar-Ya, Asie, A-Sou, Ate, A Tya, Ava, Avo, Aya, Ay Wan, Ay Men, Ay Oa, Azet. And that’s just those Equalists whose names began with the first letter.” His voice was shaking, and I felt almost...ashamed.

He had remembered all of them by name. Even after twenty years. I had forgotten most of their faces. 

“Do you even think about the casualties your _revolution_ will cause? Do you care for those who follow your banner, about the lies you tell them? Because you _do_ lie,” his voice was dripping with distaste, and with a shout of effort Amon threw his good hand upward and there was a horrified gasp as behind us, all at once, the water of Yue Bay lifted into the air all around the pier we were standing on, towering fifteen, twenty, thirty feet into the air, casting shade and flecks of foam and water onto everyone on stage.

“Do you know what lie I told?” He said, voice shaking with effort. “I said, _My name is Amon. Firebenders took my family. Firebenders took my face._ ” He dropped the microphone and it bounced, squealing, and he reached up and ripped his mask off.

The horror-filled gasp of the audience was audible. The black uniforms froze. Korra made a horrified noise, and I could see tears glistening, unshed, in his eyes.

“No, Firebenders did not take my face.” In the utter absolute silence, the waves still towering over us, Amon reached up and unlaced his coat, shed it onto the ground, and then shrugged out of the shirt under it, dumped them next to him, and straightened. “They did not take my body.” His entire torso on the back side was covered in old, dark red and blackened scars, charred skin and bone, and a huge missing chunk of muscle on the the right side of his back and shoulder, that made him hold that hand awkwardly, always perpetually a few inches up.

“Nobody took my face. My brother meant to stop us, once and for all. To end the horrible things that he, my father, and I did. To give us _something_ , some kind of absolution. Was he right? I don’t know.” He hesitated. “Tarrlok is dead, and Spirits cannot speak to us of their wishes. Perhaps only Yue knows. But what I _do_ know, what I have learned in spending twenty _years_ of my life in constant pain, in suffering, is that if this is what I have to do to atone for the crimes and the mistakes I made, for the people who died for the lie I lived, for the people who suffered at my misguided sense of justice, _then I will live it_. Until the day I die.

“Look around you.” Amon gestured to all the people standing below. “Do you know how many of them are Non-Benders? No. You have no idea. You would have to ask every single one of them, and many of them wouldn’t tell you, and that would be their right. And that _should_ be their right. But there should be the same infrastructure to support them that there is to support Benders, and it’s _happening_.” He looked at me, and hesitated.

I could practically see it written in his eyes. I nodded.

“Thirty years ago, outside of this city, a young woman was abducted, beaten, raped, and killed by a gang of Firebenders because her Non-Bender brother couldn’t make enough money as an engineer to pay their ransom.” My hands shook. “Do you know what would happen if they had tried that now? Do you know what would happen if a group of Firebenders kidnapped my daughter, who can’t Bend?

“The authorities would treat them like criminals. They would exercise the full reach of the law, and they _would be stopped_.” I took a deep breath, and he reached out, set a hand on my shoulder. “Twenty years ago, that was unheard of. That was _impossible_. Do you understand, now?

“The fight isn’t over. It’s a long way from that, and you’re right to keep fighting it. But the way to fight _isn’t with violence_ , not now. Vote. Protest. Make non-violent gestures. Stage sit-ins. Start rallies, and marches. Contact your local Councilman. Make youth groups that support your community. Fight _back_ against gentrification. Help your children go to university so that they can revitalise and rebuild the work force, to change the spaces limited to Benders in our society.

“Taking away Bending doesn’t solve the problem. Without Bending, we’re different people than we are with it. It’s just as much a part of our bodies as our lungs, our arms, our legs. The goal isn’t to damage _anyone_ , the goal is to raise people up. To be equal does not mean taking away what makes us human, it means making the playing field fair. That means that the level we reach needs to be just as high as the Benders; not bring them down onto the level that Non-Benders still have to fight through.

“That will happen,” Amon said, and his quiet, fervent voice carried. “It won’t happen in my lifetime. I won’t live to see it happen. Spirits know Lieu probably won’t either. But our children, _they_ will. You will. Your children will, and they will grow up in a world that is so _different_ from the one that I was born into. If there is nothing else that I, that you, can leave the next generation, it is that.

“Live, and live honestly. Fight for your rights, but hurting people solves nothing. Make this world a better place for your children than it was for you. If we can do that much in our lives, that’s enough.”

The silence fell and it was deafening, and after a moment, Amon shifted his head and the water dropped back into Yue Bay with an audible, almost deafening, crash. The silence continued, as he bent over and picked up his coat, shaking all over with the effort of it. He stood back up, and looked away from the uniforms, all of them frozen, at Korra.

“Thank you,” he said, at last, and prepared to leave, and she half-stepped forward.

“Wait!” Her voice carried. “Wait. Please.” Amon settled back on his heels as she lowered her hand. “Amon...” She hesitated. “What you did...wasn’t. The right thing. I think we can all agree on that.” They smiled ruefully at each other, and I sighed, lowering my Kali Sticks. “But what you did changed the _world_. Nobody ever ignored Non-Benders again. You...opened the door. For us to do _the right thing_. Without you, without the sacrifices of the Equalists, I know we wouldn’t be as far toward equality as we are today. You paved the way, you changed the world.” Korra hesitated, and then slowly stepped forward, even as Amon stiffened back against me. She raised her hands gently to show she meant no harm, and he relaxed, before she continued over and took his hands in hers, held them tight, and looked into his eyes. 

I had never realised before that she was so...small, this close up, in person. She was significantly shorter than Amon was, coming up to about his nose.

“Amon, what you and...and your Lieutenant,” I grimaced, but there was nothing to be done, “And the Equalists, and everyone who followed in your footsteps did, that can’t be forgotten. That can’t be overlooked.” Korra’s mouth twisted, and then she said, in words so honest and pure I could feel the weight of thousands of lives and voices in them, “You are heroes.”

The sun came out, bright and golden and glorious. A gust of wind blew, and the tarp over the statue ripped off.

“Oh, Spirits,” Amon whispered, just loud enough for Korra and myself to hear.

The statue was...maybe twenty feet tall. In the centre, the emblem of Republic City sat surrounded by a radial of the four elements and a fifth, outer ring, marked with symbols in every written language for Non-Bender. It was held floating in the hands of a great figure, head bowed, and the mask was something I could have drawn in my sleep.

Amon’s face was bowed, shadowed by a sculpted hood, but whoever had created it had somehow gotten the lifelike half-smile, coy and knowing, of his mask. The radial in his hands twisted slightly when the wind blew, the symbols and the elemental seals turning with each gust of wind off of the bay.

Nobody said anything. Nobody moved.

“To commemorate twenty years,” Korra whispered, “We dedicate this statue in the honour of every life lost during the Revolution, no matter how, and no matter the side. Carved on the pedestal are the names of every person who died, without marker of their faction. They’ll be remembered, Amon. Every one of them. Every single person.” He was crying now, holding tight to her hands and shaking, tears dripping hot fast tracks down his cheeks. He kept hiccoughing, quietly. “We remember them, today. And on every other day, on into the future. We remember their work, and their sacrifice, and their legacy that stands in Republic City today, and in the future.

“They will never be forgotten.”

 

 

The cheers were deafening. Amon crying was beautiful. Korra’s sad smile was heart-wrenching.

If I had died then and there, it would have been in peace and utter contentment.

**Author's Note:**

> check me out on tumblr [@professorjonathanphaedrus](http://professorjonathanphaedrus.tumblr.com/)


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